Hilton Als and Emma Cline on the Late Joan Didion

Hilton Als and Emma Cline on the Late Joan Didion

Joan Didion tried and failed, she said, “to think”; that is, to write about abstractions and symbols, and make grand arguments in the manner of the New York intellectuals of her time. Instead, the California native—who died in December, at the age of eighty-seven—built her work around close observation of American life as she saw it, withholding judgment. And while many of her intellectual contemporaries belong now to a bygone era, “for my generation,” Emma Cline notes, “her influence is so massive.” Cline’s best-selling novel “The Girls” is set in nineteen-sixties California, on the fringes of a cult—what we might think of as Didion country. “I almost can’t think of a writer who is more of a touchstone for every writer that I know.” In fact, younger writers need to “unlearn” her voice, Hilton Als tells David Remnick, in order to find their own. Als notes that Didion eventually rejected the persona of her early works, which was imbued with white female fragility; and she was prophetic, he notes, in placing race and gender at the center of America’s battles.

Since Joan Didion’s death, The New Yorker has published Postscripts by Als, Cline, Zadie Smith, and Nathan Heller. Some of Didion’s own contributions to The New Yorker can be found here.

Jaksot(1020)

Zadie Smith on Politics, Turning Fifty, and Mind Control

Zadie Smith on Politics, Turning Fifty, and Mind Control

Since Zadie Smith published her début novel, “White Teeth,” twenty-five years ago, she has been a bold and original voice in literature. But those who aren’t familiar with Smith’s work outside of fict...

24 Loka 202528min

Richard Linklater on His Two New Films, “Blue Moon” and “Nouvelle Vague”

Richard Linklater on His Two New Films, “Blue Moon” and “Nouvelle Vague”

Richard Linklater is one of the most admired directors working today, and yet moviegoers may admire him for very different things. There are early comedies such as “Slacker” and “Dazed and Confused”; ...

21 Loka 202521min

How the Trump Administration Made Higher Education a Target

How the Trump Administration Made Higher Education a Target

The swiftness and severity with which the Trump Administration has tried to impose its will on higher education came as a shock to many, not least university presidents and faculties from Harvard to U...

17 Loka 202529min

John Carpenter Picks Three Favorite Film Scores

John Carpenter Picks Three Favorite Film Scores

The filmmaker John Carpenter has a whole shelf of cult classics: “They Live,” “The Thing,” “Escape from New York,” “Halloween,” and so many more. And while he hasn’t directed a new movie in more than ...

14 Loka 202512min

Zohran Mamdani Says He's Ready for Donald Trump

Zohran Mamdani Says He's Ready for Donald Trump

Next month, New York City may elect as its next mayor a man who was pretty much unknown to the broader public a year ago. Zohran Mamdan, who is currently thirty-three years old and a member of the Sta...

10 Loka 202548min

How Lionel Richie Mastered the Love Song

How Lionel Richie Mastered the Love Song

Lionel Richie has been making music for fifty years. He has sold more than a hundred million albums, his hits too numerous to list, and he has endeared himself to younger generations as a judge on “Am...

7 Loka 202530min

A Conservative Professor on How to Fix Campus Culture

A Conservative Professor on How to Fix Campus Culture

Robert P. George is not a passive observer of the proverbial culture wars; he’s been a very active participant. As a Catholic legal scholar and philosopher at Princeton University, he was an influenti...

3 Loka 202526min

Jimmy Kimmel and the Power of Public Pressure

Jimmy Kimmel and the Power of Public Pressure

The Political Scene’s Washington Roundtable—the staff writers Jane Mayer, Susan Glasser, and Evan Osnos—discuss how, in the wake of the reinstatement of Jimmy Kimmel’s show, public resistance has a ch...

30 Syys 202543min

Suosittua kategoriassa Politiikka ja uutiset

uutiscast
aikalisa
politiikan-puskaradio
ootsa-kuullut-tasta-2
rss-ootsa-kuullut-tasta
rss-pinnalla
rss-vaalirankkurit-podcast
tervo-halme
rss-asiastudio
otetaan-yhdet
aihe
rss-podme-livebox
the-ulkopolitist
rss-girls-finish-f1rst
et-sa-noin-voi-sanoo-esittaa
rss-tasta-on-kyse-ivan-puopolo-verkkouutiset
rss-mina-ukkola
rss-50100-podcast
rss-ulkopoditiikkaa
rikosmyytit